Wednesday, 3 June 2009

I've been getting through some sun screen this week I can tell you. Its been glorious weather for sipping Pimms by the pool and reading a good book, but not so great for what I'm doing.

I should come up with a new index of pints of sweat per 100 bricks cleaned. Don't know what I'd score, but it would be a lot. Here is the historic moment when the corners of the path were joined up thus enclosing the area of the bed and enabling me to.....

...install the planks which will make the bed raised. These are old joists which we saved when we demolished what was in our opinion a ghastly pergola.

Sorry, it had to go. Here J9 admires it with its architect and builder when we first looked at the house in 2002. Actually, it looks surprisingly good here! The stone slabs you can see on the ground are also being recycled and will make up part of the paths surrounding our vegetable beds.

But the pergola was of no practical use whatsoever, unlike this lovely bed. You could snuggle down for the night in that no problem.

Monday, 1 June 2009

As you saw from J9's skimpy attire in the last post, its been warm around here. Very warm. Too warm for digging soil and rubble, cleaning bricks, barrowing sand, mud and hardcore from here to there and especially too warm for compacting down the hardcore by bashing it with a sledgehammer. Unfortunately, that's exactly what I've been doing for several days at a stretch.

Here, the paths made of the old brick we lifted from the original floor in the studio are beginning to take shape. These will run all the way around five raised beds.

When we bought this house in 2002, we spent all our budget on space. The house was perfectly habitable, but we knew there was lots of work to do. Insulation, modernization, restoration, and lots of other "ations." We might have thought twice if we'd known just what we were taking on....